How Chords Change the Meaning of a Melody
Melody
For many players, melodies are somewhat mysterious. It can seem like a melody is a string of randomly chosen notes by the writer. The mystery perhaps comes from the fact that most people can sing a random melody that appears to make sense. However, they are actually much more restricted than you may think, and the very fact that we can do that shows how intuitive music is to us.
Melodies are, in fact, not an independent sequence of notes, but are intertwined with chords, and most of the notes that a melody uses will be notes from a chord. This is because music is made up of chords and melodies, and if we have a chord underneath the melody and the melody is using different notes, it will clash against the chord.
So we can divide melodies up into two types of notes: stable chord notes and non-chord notes. There are seven different ways that a melody can use non-chord notes:
Passing Notes - a note filling the gap between two chord notes.
Auxiliary Notes - stepping out of the chord and then back to the same chord note.
Suspensions - a note held from a previous chord that clashes and then steps down into the chord.
Retardations - a note held from a previous chord that clashes and then steps up into the chord.
Appoggiaturas - a dissonance on a strong beat that steps to a chord note.
Escape Tones - a note that steps away from a chord note and jumps in the opposite direction to another chord note.
Anticipations - a note that works with the next chord but arrives early.
Each one of these could be a Monday Music Tip within itself, and a recent Live Practice Clinic in The Practice Room was on these forms of melody notes. However, I mention them here to demonstrate that non-chord melody notes are functionally limited.
You may see a melody as C-D-E-F-G, for example. However, each of those notes has a different relationship to the chord underneath. If the chord underneath is a C major chord (CEG), then the melody would be playing: chord note (C), passing note (D), chord note (E), passing note (F), chord note (G).
This means that if the chord changes underneath this melody, then so does the meaning.
Meaning
If instead we had a G7 chord (GBDF) underneath this exact same melody, then each of the notes would feel and act differently in relation to that chord. Instead, we would have appoggiatura (C), chord note (D), passing note (E), chord note (F), chord note (G).
On the surface, this might seem like a trivial difference. We’re just naming the notes differently. However, the feeling that each of those notes has becomes entirely different. The C clashes against the chord underneath, and therefore we feel some relief moving to the D, which then works with the chord.
In the first example, using a C major chord (CEG), the exact opposite is true. The C would feel safe and stable, whereas the D would feel like it clashes against the chord. We wouldn’t want to linger on that D too long before moving to the E so that the music feels stable again.
Chords, therefore, don’t simply change the accompaniment to the melody. They are in direct relation to the melody, and melodies cannot really be understood without taking into account the harmony around them.
However, what happens if we have just a melody by itself? Well, melodies are still understood in relation to harmony. Because we know that melodies work around chord notes, within the melody itself, more often than not, we can work out what chord would be underneath (if there was one), just from the notes that are used within that melody. Once again, if we take my previous example of a melody being C-D-E-F-G, here, my assumption would be that this is outlining a C major chord because C is on the strong beat (the first beat), it contains all three of the notes from the chord, and it isn’t lingering on the notes that would be dissonant if it is a C major chord (D and F). I would be even more confident of this if we were definitely in the key of C major, where a C major chord occurs very frequently.
Reharmonisation
Reharmonisation is one of my favourite things to do, and it is simply where you change the existing chords to a song or piece of music. Musicians use it all the time to change the feeling of a piece of music or re-characterise it and make it more personal to them. It takes the concept of consonant and dissonant notes in the melody and uses it to create something interesting. You can often even see this happening within pieces of music, where an idea has one set of chords underneath it in one place, but in another place, an entirely different set of chords are used to change the relationship that the melody has to the chords.
If we take this same melody idea of C-D-E-F-G, originally, the chord that might be used for this melody is a C major chord because the melody is seemingly outlining a C major chord with some passing notes in between. However, if I wanted to re-harmonise this melody and change the colour, I could change the chord underneath to something like Am7 (ACEG). The interesting thing about Am7 is that it includes the three notes that are in a C major chord (CEG), however, it has an A at the bottom of it. This means that the actual relationship that the melody has to the chords doesn’t really change. We still have three stable chord notes and two passing notes. However, the colour of the music has changed. We now have a minor chord instead of a major chord, and we now have a seventh chord instead of a regular triad chord.
Melodies are made up of a series of tensions and resolutions. However, which notes we feel as tension and which notes we feel as resolution changes depending on the harmony we have underneath it. Learning to recognise chords in music and how melodies relate to those chords can not only help you re-harmonise a piece of music to create something unique, but it also helps you shape and show the conflict and resolution that’s littered throughout the melodies in a piece of music. In essence, a melody draws our attention and gives us something to listen to, but harmony tells us what those notes mean.
Matt